Thick blue clouds of smoke, loud singing and a pint at less than 10d (4p), a pub in the 1930s.

Mrs Rita Belsen, nee Haslock, of Littleworth Road, Downley, High Wycombe, remembers when the sight of a queue two or three people deep stretching down Hope Street in Thornaby, waiting for the Prince of Wales to open, was a daily occurrence.

Rita's grandfather, Jack Batty, ran the pub with the help of his sons and daughters.

Rita's great grandfather, Alderman Batty, who owned the Circus and the Grand Theatre in Stockton, bought the pub, nicknamed the Drum and Monkey, for his son at the end of the 19th century when Jack was 21.

After the death of Rita's father, her mother, Bertha, stayed at the Prince of Wales for a few days each week and helped her father, Jack, run it.

One of Rita's earliest memories is of being bathed in a barrel in front of the fire, which was: "Quite an experience because my own house had a bathroom."

The Drum and Monkey, with its four rooms crammed with people every night, was to become an important part of Rita's childhood.

The pub suffered during the depression of the 1920s. Jack often said that it was hardly worth the cleaners coming in to scrub the floors.

But that all changed during the 1930s and then the war years.

"These was the Drum and Monkey's great days, with the pub packed every night and ringing with the sound of singing, though when beer went up to 10d a pint there was much grumbling!

"During the war all the hit songs of the era were popular with the pub's drinkers but so were much older songs. I used to lie awake at night and listen to the singing booming through the pub.

"Cigarettes meanwhile were reserved for regular customers, strictly rationed. Everyone smoked in the Drum and Monkey, the air was blue with smoke."

The room behind the bar was ladies only and as Rita recalls: "The women always seemed to wear black and only ever drank half pints. On a couple of occasions, when I was about 12, I went into this room and sang to the women then went round with a Dr Barnardo collection tin.

"After that my grandfather gave all the ladies a drink on the house."

War took Jack's sons, John and Ronnie, away from the pub and Rita's mother and aunt Marjorie and their friend Rene Richards, nee Taylor, from Cambridge Road, ran the Prince of Wales.

Wartime meant a fresh influx of customers, namely the Americans from Thornaby airfield. The British pint must have been something of a discovery for these US airmen because the Drum and Monkey was a beer house (Bass) and didn't sell spirits.

"One American gave me his watch because I had admired it. The Americans were so generous."

Important war news was broadcast into the bar from an upstairs wireless: "It fascinated me when God Save The King started because everyone stopped drinking and stood up and all the noise, the voices and clattering of glasses was replaced by an eerie silence except for the playing of the National Anthem."

The clattering of hooves on cobbles meant the arrival of the brewery dray and this would have Rita running outside to watch: "I can hear the steady clop-clop of those hooves and the clattering of the dray's wheels now. The horses seemed as big as giants, tails swishing, and I liked the smell of their leather harnesses.

"Very big men manhandled the Hogsheads, these were the largest barrels, on long ropes down into the cellar." The pub cellar's capacity was 20 Hogsheads, 10 stored each side of the cellar.

One Hogshead equalled 54 gallons. The dray carried 19 Hogsheads of best bitter (Bass) and one of mild. So 20 Hogsheads at 54 gallons equalled 1,080 gallons or 8,640 pints served every week and as Rita says: "Even then the pub was so busy sometimes a sign went up a saying 'Sorry Sold Out'."

After the war John and Ronnie returned and it seemed like the old days were back.

Another ritual in the life of the pub remembered by Rita was the sorting of the previous night's takings.

"My grandfather put all the money onto a sheet of paper which he laid on the dining room table. He counted all the florins, shillings, half crowns and coppers, stacking them neatly into piles. I would stand and watch him.

"There was something enthralling about this daily event, the chink chink of coins being counted, my grandfather sitting at the table and the sunlight catching the dust swirling in the air, making the coins glitter."

The money counted, Jack or one of Rita's uncles, John or Ronnie, took the money to the bank.

Jack Batty, however, was feeling older and tired and the family had had enough so the pub was sold towards the end of the 1940s.

Rita is saddened by fact that the area was later demolished, and the life of the pub - voices, shouting, talking, singing, beer drays and great horses clattering over cobbles, decades of pub life - have all gone.